


the next moment to live

by sub_textual



Category: Bleach
Genre: Family, Gen, bawwcute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2012-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-07 03:21:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/426380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sub_textual/pseuds/sub_textual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every fight is to the death, or until the opponent cannot fight anymore. This is what they live by. What Ken-chan is always looking for, the next fight, the next moment to live. To breathe. To laugh and smile and show his teeth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the next moment to live

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladywinter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/gifts).



Being torn apart is not something Yachiru is familiar with, but Ken-chan enjoys it. It cracks his smile apart and shows his teeth, shiny and white and gleaming, like bones bleached white, like the armor of a Hollow, of an Arrancar, or the Espada Ken-chan fought in Hueco Mundo. White, the perfect color against which to paint and color with blood. She thinks maybe, for Ken-chan, the feeling of the tearing, of being ripped apart like when claws carved into his body and made him fall down to think about how to fight him, and for a moment she wasn't sure if Ken-chan would really get up after all, she thinks -- thinks that the tearing is somehow a rending of life itself. It is living, truly living, at that very moment when pain courses so violently that you think you are going to die this time, and your opponent is strong, and worthy of causing that pain.  
  
Jyuuichibantai lives by this belief, lives to fight and breathes battle and the smell of sweat and blood and the sound of pain. It is exilirating, glorious, and Yachiru, Yachiru loves to watch it, loves to see it happen, see how it unfolds, watches when Ken-chan lives, watches every moment of that life. Because. Because, they began life together. When she was small, formless and nameless and he, too, was without a name he could call his own. They began their life at that moment. Together. And so. So, she watches him fight and watches when he truly lives in those moments. Watches him smile and how his teeth gleam bone-white, armor-white against the sun. A slash of white at night. White like the taichou's haori that he wears with the number of their squad on his back.  
  
Every fight is to the death, or until the opponent cannot fight anymore. This is what they live by. What Ken-chan is always looking for, the next fight, the next moment to live. To breathe. To laugh and smile and show his teeth.  
  
Sometimes Ken-chan is too strong, and the person is simply too weak. Yet they charge forward anyway. Those days are not fun. There is no fun in fighting a weakling. There is no challenge, no battle in that. But the days when there is a challenge and Ken-chan's teeth shine, those are the best days of all.  
  
Other days, Yachiru finds moments of living away from the fight, away from the battle and the smell of blood and Ken-chan’s reiatsu exploding like stars. Like today. She has found herself in Rukongai, and a playmate with bright red hair and a smudge across his nose. She decided that he looked like a tomato, so Tomato-head is now his name!  
  
"I'm Yachiru!"  
  
This name that she has is the name that Ken-chan gave her. There was something very important about that act of naming, that which brings something into existence. It is painful to not have a name, to be nameless, to be a thing, to not have a place in the world. Yachiru's place is on Ken-chan's shoulder. He put her there, just like he gave her her name when before she was nothing, a being in a small body, and she was very aware of her smallness even if she could not understand it. She understood her smallness because of the largeness of the rest of the world, the streets of the Kusajishi district filled with the very large feet that moved on by, kicking up dust which made her cough and choke. Dust the color of the blood dried into it and the sounds of the screams from far, far overhead, which she could not see because she was always in the mud back then. Back then, before her name. She crawled. And she saw. She saw red. There was always so much of it. It was very pretty, especially when the sun set, and the puddles took on a kind of shine and glittered. This was her childhood, her tiny kingdom, her nameless one, for she did not have a name, and therefore she could not name anything either. She didn't even have the language or the vocabulary to describe her world, only colors. Only the red mud and the puddles and Ken-chan sitting like a god with his jeweled sword.  
  
He gave her a name and he put her on his shoulder, and that is where Yachiru has been for a very, very long time. She has learned to love her smallness. Her smallness is, in fact, very important. It is attached to her name, and it is attached to his shoulder, and her place in his life. Ken-chan is large. Yachiru is small. This is how the world must be. This is their world, a world of moments. A world where they wait for the next battle. For the next thrill.  
  
But right now...  
  
Right now, Yachiru is distracted from the ever-constant search for battle and thrill because of the promise of sweet things. Chewy dango in mitarashi sauce on a stick. Candy. Maybe stolen right out of the stall in the dango shop so famous in Rukongai that the kids all want to eat at but can never really seem to afford.  
  
“Let’s go steal some dango, ne!” Yachiru excitedly decides and grabs Tomato-head’s slightly dirty hand and drags him along towards the direction of the shop.  
  
“Anou, Yachiru-chan... I don’t know if that’s a good idea...”  
  
“What are you talking about, silly? Dango is always a good idea! C’mon, Tomato-head, let’s go get some.”  
  
Sweet things, after all, are the second best thing to watching Ken-chan show his teeth. Maybe it’s because sweetness bursts on her tongue the way Ken-chan’s sword makes things burst too. Yachiru’s not sure, but today she’s determined to show Tomato-head just how fun living can be, when you are chewing on a stolen stick of dango.


End file.
